Page 123 of Once Upon a Crown
The light began to fade, pulling back into the Myrgonite crown. When the light returned to normal, the crown was still there but broken. Rhen’s bloodied and battered body lay next to it. It wouldn’t take a physician to know he was no longer breathing. But all around him, Argonian corpses covered the ground, too many to count. Just about the entire army had been brought down by the last magic that erupted from the Myrgonite stone. The royal crown. My crown.
All around it was deathly quiet, apart from a cool winter breeze and the cries of a few circling crows, already there to feast on the flesh of dead soldiers. No one knew quite what to do. No one knew what exactly had just happened, what they’d borne witness to.
And then the air began to hum.
It was a soft buzzing at first, and in a few seconds, it became louder.
The ground beneath my feet began to shake and I grabbed Cai for support.
“The mountain,” Cai said under his breath. I looked to see what he meant. Rocks were beginning to crumble at the top of the mountain. Snow peaks cascading into rivers of snow.
“It’s the caves.” I wiped a tear-stained cheek, or maybe it was blood. I was no longer sure. “They’re collapsing.”
The wave of magic sent out from Rhen destroying the crown must have caused structural damage to the Myrgonite mines. The ground beneath shook harder and it became an effort to keep standing.
The remainder of the Norrandish army watched as the mountain with the Myrgonite mines collapsed into itself, created dust and rocks and rubble, reshaping the earth as if the Myrgonite stones had never been there at all.
Chapter 49
Lance
One thing I could be certain about was that getting shot with an arrow was a pain in the arse.
Or a pain in the lower side, in my case. I didn’t remember the arrow being removed or the wound being stitched up.
All I remembered was waking up in the new infirmary with Elara sitting next to my cot.
Everything hurt. My body felt as though it had been trampled by a herd of horses.
“Look who’s still alive,” she joked.
“Barely,” I croaked out with a groan. I tried to sit up, but a pain shot through my side, rendering me immobile.
“I wouldn’t move too much, if I were you. Physician said you’re lucky to be alive. You lost a lot of blood.”
“Where’s Gwen?” She’d kneeled by my side when it happened. She’d begged me not to leave her. I’d heard her cry, fearing that I would die in front of her.
“I told her to go and get some rest. She hasn’t left your side since it happened, though I don’t know what the two of you were doing there in the first place.”
“It’s a long story.” Something I didn’t have the energy to go into at that moment. Despite just waking up, I felt tired. I could have used a drink, but I suspected I wasn’t going to get one anytime soon.
Elara leaned a little closer, her expression curious. “What exactly is going on between the two of you anyway?”
“When did we become the kind of siblings to discuss this sort of thing?” Elara and I had never been close, probably never would be, and reasonably so. The fact that we got along at all was more than enough.
“Way to evade the question.” But she didn’t press me further.
I looked around the infirmary at the wounded soldiers that surrounded me. Some asleep, some reading, some still moaning in pain.
“So, when can I be moved to my rooms?”
“Soon. We’re a little understaffed, with most of the servants helping here in the infirmary.” Elara crossed her legs, sitting on a chair next to me. She wasn’t wearing a dress, looking quite comfortable in her riding breeches and a white shirt, the cut of it slightly feminine.
“Are you going to tell me how the hell you managed to defeat Aries and the entire Argonian army?”
She was here, making idle conversation, so I had to assume that Cai was still alive. That while there were probably many casualties, somehow, for some reason and by some miracle, we had come out victorious.
“It’s a long story.” Elara threw my own words back at me. It was hard to argue with that kind of logic.
